Okay, I'm getting sick of dealing with the boxes of loose leaf field notes (in binders) that I have accumulated over the last two decades. For the most part I scan them and put them in the attic, only to be ever bee seen again by the squirrels and spiders. Given the fact that everything is collected digitally, my notes are pretty sparse. Basically HI, BS info and points shot from each setup with the occasional note and field sketch.
The question is, should I keep the paper or just toss them after scanning. I'm leaning towards tossing since I don't even keep hard copies of receipts anymore.
Thanks
John
Don't look to me for help.?ÿ I have stuff that 99 out of 100 would have tossed decades ago.
I have always thought everything should be kept. But I have never been asked to show anything or known of any surveyor who was asked. And maybe twice in 21 years have I looked at my old notes. One time another surveyor sent me his notes from a job that was going to court, but they were obviously the notes from the wrong job. When I ran out of filing cabinet space 2 years ago I started going through old files and weeding out old notes from the topos and title surveys and the proposals and invoices. I takes a ton of time, but I get back 2/3 of the filing space. I've gotten through 4 of my 21 years of files.?ÿ
Last summer, I visited the first company I worked for; August 1975. The still had the field books with my notes in them circa 1979.
They said they refer back to them, a lot.
Forgive me for what I am about to do, but I can not help myself.
I've heard of post tensioning and I've felt tension when trying to produce field notes. I've slacked off but my field notes have never slacked so much that they needed to be retensioned.
Scan & Toss. ?ÿLike I do. ?ÿI only have a few yellow bound field books on my desk mostly for nostalgia.
@holy-cow Same here, I still have cloths I wore in high school (and I have grand kids in high school). But I'm trying to change my ways.
@dougie I still have the information, just in electronic format. As a plus, I store the copies on the cloud and can access them from anywhere.
Recently on a rainy day I spent time refiling old sets of notes that I had used over the past year by pulling them from their permanent homes in file cabinets in a building I use for storage that is a few miles from the office.?ÿ No need to rush to put them back.?ÿ But, one set I put back dated to 1988 and was very helpful with the project we had several months ago?ÿ Nearly every job file has details or copied surveys by others that do not appear on the final plat.?ÿ Many times a few minutes in those files will save a few hours traveling back to the courthouse a few counties distant.
Toss.
Never think about them again.
The end.
I have all my field books. Plus all my county surveyor field books from 1905 to 1910. It melts my heart to read them. One set of notes are dated 1912 for a "county road". Many years later, the heirs of the pioneers who petitioned for this to be designated a county road sued me and the county over that designation. I was told that only an idiot would consider today's road a county road just because that's what the county surveyor called it in 1912. In 2000, all my field notes were subpoenaed for a lawsuit. I gave the attorneys my coordinate list. Didn't write anything in a field book. The case went to the highest colorado court and no one ever knew what the coordinates meant especially the judge. 5 years ago, I was accused of some crime by a landowner and I found my field notes from 15 years prior (miraculosly) that proved my survey was correct, sent a copy. He has no idea what the field notes mean, but he shut up. Some day, I'll toss them all.
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How would the court verify if the fieldbooks & the data therein really were written at the time you said it was written? The lawyer for the other side could always counter that it was filled up yesterday using an old fieldbook right? There was a time in my office where even small surveys would use 1 fiedbook leaving any blank pages unused .Fieldbooks or any survey data are not registered or notarized so using them in court really does not prove anything for either party. Maybe for those working in sensitive?ÿ cases, the surveyor should mail to themselves the fieldbooks via registered mail and kept sealed for archiving.
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1970s to 1980s Rite-in-the-Rain bound fieldbooks with proper pencil only notations (which cannot be obliterated without an original strikeout) with actual instrument observations and sketches on the right hand spread are a treasure if it's actually a diary of the day to day activities of a survey crew.?ÿ Useful is the exact date, crew list and weather observations on the upper right hand corner.?ÿ I was bummed when we went to three ring binders where the party chief (and others) could replace pages without detection and then on to the electronic age where the original unmassaged "field notes" just got lost as generations of computers evolved.?ÿ Sad.
Yah, ancient level notes, cutsheets and cross section reports are worthy of trashcanning, but original fieldbooks concerning boundaries are worthy of archival treatment.?ÿ I visited a former County employer's office a few years ago and they had all 275 (from 1915) bound fieldbooks in a locked cabinet and they opened it and I was able to find a fieldbook where I did my first Tellurometer observation.?ÿ Also was involved in the scanning of 1,000 bound fieldbooks (1916-1980s) for a major Highway Dept.?ÿ I made it clear the original books be archived or donated to a museum; not a scan and discard scenario.?ÿ The idea being computer access to high quality scans protects the originals from wear and nefariousness. Behold:
How would the court verify if the fieldbooks & the data therein really were written at the time you said it was written? The lawyer for the other side could always counter that it was filled up yesterday using an old fieldbook right? There was a time in my office where even small surveys would use 1 fiedbook leaving any blank pages unused .Fieldbooks or any survey data are not registered or notarized so using them in court is really does not prove anything for either party. Maybe for those working in sensitive?ÿ cases should mail to themselves the fieldbooks via registered mail and kept sealed for archiving.
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Oh how wrong you are.?ÿ Records kept in the normal course of business with provenance are respected by the courts and land surveyor fieldbooks are held in the highest regard if proven original concerning boundary disputes. An attack against them as not being in the record will fail because the courts struggle to achieve equity and will consider extrinsic ancient records to resolve the situation.
You may poop on private/public fieldbooks but they are powerful evidence of what the 'sitch was in 1945 and should be considered.
